“Apple Intelligence could be on par with the iPod's scroll wheel and iPhone's touch interface” – Tim Cook for WSJ

The Wall Street Journal's Ben Cohen spent several days with Apple CEO Tim Cook to find out his expectations for Apple Intelligence, what Steve Jobs told Tim before he passed away, and which app he considers the most underrated.

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The first thing Tim Cook does when he wakes up is check his iPhone. It sits on silent mode on the nightstand when the CEO of Apple, the most valuable company in the history of the world, takes out the device and begins sorting through his incoming messages.

He reads email, reviews nightly sales reports, and studies countries where numbers are changing to keep his finger on the pulse of the business. Then he puts the phone down. It's time to raise your own heart rate. During his workout, which he records on his Apple Watch, classic rock music plays through his AirPods. In the office, he switches to MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac. When on the road, he travels with an iPad Pro. “Every day,” he says, “every product.”

But over the past year, Cook has been pursuing two other products that wouldn't exist if not for two of the biggest bets the trillion-dollar company has ever made.

These are the latest technological innovations to emerge from a patch of land in Cupertino, California, that have changed the world and ruled our lives over the past half century. The iPhone alone brings in more money per year than the largest American bank, yet accounts for only half of Apple's revenue. The rest comes from desktops, laptops, tablets, headphones, watches, streaming services, movies, TV and music, as well as all the other hardware, software, products and services that Tim Cook uses from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep.

There is one idea that embodies the approach to innovation that makes it all possible, and it may be the closest thing to Apple's big unified theory. It's a philosophy made up of just four words that describe Apple's past, present and, of course, future. Four words that help explain why the company dove into spatial computing and artificial intelligence this year. In one of those epochal years when it seems like everything is about to change again, I heard them over and over again in conversations with Apple executives and Cook himself: Not the first, but the best.

Cook elaborated on those four words in a lengthy interview this summer at Caffè Macs on Apple's campus, where the level-headed and usually reserved CEO explained that his company's top priority is making great products that enrich people's lives.

“We’re quite happy that we’re not the first,” he says. “As it turns out, it takes time to do something really cool. It takes a lot of iterations. You need to worry about every detail. Sometimes it takes a little longer. We'd rather release a product like this and make this kind of contribution to people's lives than rush to be the first to release something. If we can do both, that's great. But if we can only do one thing, there is no doubt about it. If you talk to 100 people, 100 of them will tell you: “The main thing is to be the best.”

Tim Cook is the longest-serving CEO of Apple in his career. But 13 years since he found himself in the difficult position of succeeding Steve Jobs, he still gets nervous at big moments.

When guests gathered on the glittering Apple Park campus for the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, it seemed as if the weather was created by Apple itself. The first car I noticed on campus was a red Tesla with a VISNPRO license plate. Just a few months earlier, Apple had unveiled a stylish spatial computing headset, the Vision Pro, a gadget that takes you into the future. And now the company was preparing to introduce something no less ambitious.

Cook flew onto the stage to thunderous applause. He may not have the same charisma as Jobs, but he is the real star at this event. After greeting the crowd, Cook sat in the corner of the front row as a line of executives demonstrated Apple Intelligence, the feature everyone was there for. She can summarize your notices, edit a letter you've written, or rewrite it to make it friendly, professional, or concise. She can also create personalized emoji. And it was smart to rebrand a tempting but scary idea into something more familiar and comfortable – not artificial intelligence, but Apple Intelligence. Cook likes to say that this is AI for all of us.

“We weren't the first to develop artificial intelligence,” he says. “But we did it in a way that we thought was best for the client.” Including one client, who, by the way, runs the company. Until recently, Cook read long emails, but now relies on summaries generated by Apple Intelligence. “If I can save time here and there,” he says, “it adds up to something significant over the course of a day, a week, a month.” Even before its official release, Apple Intelligence changed his productivity and daily habits. “It changed my life,” he admits. “It really made a difference.”

But how much will it change his business?

Every second, Apple sells seven more iPhones. While you were reading this sentence, the company sold several units. And a few more. What's amazing is that the iPhone has become so powerful and durable that you no longer need to buy a new one every year. I'm actually writing this sentence on an iPhone 11 that I bought five years ago. (“It's time to upgrade,” Cook tells me.) The computers we hold in our hands have gotten better, but gradually, not so obviously that we need to buy the next one—until now. Or at least that's the concept behind Apple Intelligence. If your iPhone is older than the 15 Pro or Pro Max, the only way to add the software that changed Tim Cook's life is to buy a newer model.

I asked Cook if he believed Apple Intelligence would make the experience of his company's products radically different, slightly different, or nothing at all.

“Very different,” he replied.

Cook puts Apple Intelligence on par with such innovative breakthroughs as the iPod's scroll wheel and the iPhone's touch interface. “I think, looking back, this will be one of those key events that puts us on a new technological trajectory,” he says.

In other words, he believes that what happens to him will happen to everyone. For some this will happen very soon. For others – later. “But it will happen,” he says. “It will happen to all of us.”

The day after Cook officially ushered in this new era, Apple added more than $200 billion in value. It was the most profitable day in the company's history.

“I love the world that is just being formed,” says Tim Cook. “I love the idea that a lot of people feel that tomorrow will be better than today—that dream, that belief that you are standing on the shoulders of your parents.”

Tomorrow will be better than today. To understand Cook, you need to understand that he truly believes this. It's a very American idea, although, as he says, it's no longer uniquely American. He finds it in every corner of the world. “There is perhaps no more important philosophy in life,” he says. “I think this is something that we all need to not only preserve, but feel a responsibility to pass on.”

He knows this first hand. Before the 45th President of the United States named him Tim Apple, Cook grew up in the small town of Robertsdale, Alabama. Neither of his parents attended college. As a child, he decided to attend Auburn University, where he studied industrial engineering, watched football and learned to ask a lot of questions.

“I went from believing that if you ask questions, you're basically not very smart, to believing that the more you ask, the more inquisitive you become and the smarter you become,” he says.

Cook worked for IBM and Compaq and developed such a reputation as a supply chain and logistics expert that in early 1998 he received a call from Apple. The rational thing to do would be to hang up the phone – a year earlier the company lost more than a billion dollars. But he listened to his intuition and agreed to meet with Jobs. Within minutes, he knew he wanted to work for Apple.

After moving to California, Cook lived in a small apartment, drove a Honda Accord, but preferred a bicycle, and ate chicken, rice and steamed vegetables. At Apple, he revolutionized the company's supply chain, modernized its logistics, and turned a mediocre operations team into a true machine. In 2005, he was named chief operating officer and became CEO in August 2011. That October, on the day of his first major event as CEO, Cook went to Jobs' home to say goodbye. One of Jobs's final pieces of advice to his successor was: Don't ask what I would do—just do what's right. The next day he died.

It was natural to wonder whether Apple could survive without Jobs. But under Cook's leadership, the company has evolved into something more predictable, perhaps a little less magical, but much more valuable.

The day I met him at Caffè Macs, there was nothing in his appearance that suggested this man could make a major impact on the world economy with just one word. One of the most influential people on the planet was dressed in a simple polo, casual jeans, sneakers and wore Nike glasses.

Even today, Cook, who turns 64 in November, maintains his privacy to such an extent that the public knows little about him. We only know that his favorite pastime is hiking in national parks. That he drinks Diet Mountain Dew, although not as often as he used to because Apple doesn't stock his favorite soda. That he follows the Duke basketball team and the Auburn football team so closely that this summer he kept an eye on who would be the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos, choosing between two Auburn alums. He likes it. A decade ago, when he came out as the first openly gay CEO of a major company, Cook said he preferred to focus on Apple products and their impact on customers' lives.

With that in mind, I asked him if he ever wondered what his childhood in Alabama would have been like if it had been filled with such foods.

“Yes, I thought about it,” he answers quietly. “This was before the Internet, and the idea that you could find people like you would have seemed completely incredible back then.” This would open up a new world for him, full of answers to numerous questions – a portal beyond the small town where one boy, with the belief that tomorrow would be better than today, was already beginning to think differently.

One of the things about Apple is that many of its most successful products once seemed like failures. You may have already forgotten about this, because now it is difficult to believe that anyone could doubt that there was a market for them. But Apple executives remember. They remember times when the company was laughed at for reasons that now seem completely absurd. The iPhone didn't have a physical keyboard. iPods cost $399, while CD players cost $39. AirPods looked strange and fell out of my ears. Who would wear an Apple Watch or use Apple Pay or watch a show on Apple TV+ about an American football coach hired by a British soccer team? Now they are already used to it. “In some ways it’s predictable,” Cook says.

Some devices that have now become an integral part of life seemed disappointing at first but have improved over time. Others were simply ahead of their time. In the rest of Silicon Valley, patience is no more prized than carrier pigeons. But Cook says he was confident in every product that had a slow start that it would eventually find its way. “It’s not that people are wrong and we’re right,” he says. “We have enough faith that if we love a product ourselves, there will be enough people who will love it too.”

A company that can do so much has a hard time deciding what exactly it wants to do—and what it can do better than anyone else. “The key for us is focus,” Cook says, “giving up really, really good ideas to make room for great ones.” But the only thing harder than deciding what to do is doing it. “We would say that innovation is not the idea itself,” says Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi. “Innovation is about creating the right product that can be delivered brilliantly at the right time.”

In other words, innovation is everything that happens after an idea is born. And at Apple, this happens in a highly guarded area called the Design Studio. During the tour, opaque white barriers appear in front of me, preventing me from looking at the secret projects in progress. The company's designers joke that 99 percent of their ideas will never see the light of day. This year, for example, Apple scrapped plans to build an electric car after more than a decade of work and billions in investment, a costly reminder that Apple products fail more often inside the company than outside it.

Of all the products that went beyond my vision, the most ambitious was the Vision Pro. There are many reasons why a supercomputer disguised as ski goggles is a technological marvel. When I talked to Apple's top designers, they couldn't reveal most of them. Apple claims that Vision Pro has more than 5,000 patents, which means 5,000 solutions to problems that no one could overcome before. To create such a product, says Alan Dye, vice president of experience design, “you not only need a big idea that might be innovative, but hundreds or thousands of innovative thoughts that follow it.”

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Vision Pro is the emotion it evokes. It's hard to believe that being immersed in technology can be emotionally overwhelming. But when you see an ultra-high-resolution spatial photo of your three-year-old daughter or watch a captivating video of a grandfather who's no longer around, it's no longer just a headset. This is a time machine. You put on this device from the future and relive moments from the past. You return to the present with eyes full of tears.

“That's exactly why we created this product,” says Richard Howert, vice president of industrial design. “It can do things that other products can’t.”

Vision Pro doesn't have a major use for it yet, so I asked Cook how he uses it himself. At work, of course, when he needs to open multiple windows for multitasking. But especially at home. “I always thought that having to sit in a certain place in the living room was too restrictive,” he says. He prefers to lie on the couch, project “Ted Lasso” and “The Morning Show” onto the ceiling and watch them through the Vision Pro. “It’s much nicer than sitting like a statue in front of the TV,” he insists.

Jon M. Chu agrees. The Wicked director grew up in Silicon Valley and bought the Vision Pro on its first day of sale. From the moment he put it on, Chu knew it would have a significant impact on his creative process. “Everyone here laughs at me because I’m so passionate about it,” he says. Jobs once called computers “bicycles for the mind.” “And I feel like Vision Pro is a mental rocket,” Chu says. “You don’t know where you’re going, but you can go somewhere and figure it out with others.”

However, this “rocket” is an expensive pleasure. When the Vision Pro came out this year, mixed reality faced the reality that most consumers weren't willing to shell out $3,500 for a cool gadget.

“Everything gets better over time, and this product will improve as well,” Cook says. “In my opinion, this is already a success today in terms of creating an ecosystem.”

And from a sales point of view?

“I always want to sell the most because ultimately we want to get our products into the hands of as many people as possible,” he says. “And of course I’d like to sell more.” But there is a limit to the number of faces this version of Vision Pro will end up on. “At $3,500, it's not a mainstream product,” Cook says. “Right now it’s an early adopter product. For people who want the technologies of tomorrow today. Luckily, there are enough of these people to make it exciting.”

Even more exciting is how today's technology will evolve—and what it might look like tomorrow. The next version of Vision Pro will almost certainly be lighter and cheaper, but the competition will also be tougher, with Meta betting big on smart glasses and augmented reality glasses, putting tech giants with different strategies on a path to conflict. Yet Apple has a history of turning uncertainty into ubiquity. If you're doubtful about Vision Pro, you might be right. Or you could be as wrong as the naysayers who once dismissed iPods, iPhones and AirPods. And Cook learned another lesson from the success of the company's iconic products.

“It doesn’t happen overnight,” he says. “That hasn’t happened with any of these products.”

They will all make decisions and create new habits with their devices, just like Cook did with his iPhone. What's on his iPhone wallpaper? Photo with nephew in Grand Teton National Park. The most underrated app in his opinion? Notes where he writes down or dictates his thoughts so as not to forget them.

Best name for a group chat? He looked at me as if I had asked him about the best Android phone.

“Is the title better?” – he asked again. “I don’t name them. What do you call yours? Interesting. Maybe I'll try that.”

The next time we met, Cook proudly announced that he called the chat with his university friends: “Roommates.”

On the morning of the iPhone's release, he had completely different thoughts on his mind. “You work on something for many years and wonder how it will be received,” he says. “You never know until you put it out into the world.” Even then, he couldn't be sure how Apple Intelligence would be received. At that moment she was neither the first nor the best. Despite the stylish “Hello, Apple Intelligence” posters plastered throughout the store, the iPhone's most enticing new feature won't be available for another month, with other updates coming next year. But this did not seem to bother the buyers or Cook himself. “In the long term,” he says, “I don’t think this will make history at all.”

Every night, the last thing Cook does before going to bed is set the alarm on his iPhone for the unimaginably early time of 5 a.m. After our first interview, I found his email address and sent him an email. We had not corresponded before, and he did not expect this message. I thought it would get lost in the flood of emails from colleagues and reviews from clients—maybe even filtered out by spam.

I scheduled it to leave before 5am.

He responded at 5:34 am.

The response was friendly, professional and concise, but it was not written by Apple Intelligence. He typed it himself. And then Tim Cook went on with his day.

Because if you believe that tomorrow will be better than today, it also means that today will be better than yesterday.